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An Imagological Study of Freya Stark's the Southern Gates of Arabia

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An Imagological Study of Freya Stark's the Southern Gates of Arabia PEOPLE’S DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF ALGERIA Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research University of Tlemcen Faculty of Letters and Foreign Languages Department of English An Imagological Study of Freya Stark’s The Southern Gates of Arabia A Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfilment of the Requirement for a Master’s Degree in Anglo-Saxon Literature and Civilization Presented by Supervised by Mr. Mounir Kaddouri Dr. Souad Berbar Board of Examiners Dr. Daoudi Frid Chairperson Dr. Souad Berbar Supervisor Mr. Omar Rahmoun Examiner Academic Year: 2016-2017 Dedication This dissertation is dedicated to my beloved parents, who have brought me up to be the man I am today. Thank you for everything. II Acknowledgements Above all, I am thankful to Allah for the healthiness and well-being that were indispensable for the accomplishment of this dissertation. I would like to convey my profound appreciation to my supervisor Dr. Berbar, who has been the ideal supervisor. Her wise advice, eye-opening criticism and uplifting encouragement helped me in writing this work. I could not have envisaged having a better mentor for my Master study. Besides my supervisor, I wish to thank the remaining members of the jury: Dr. Frid, and Mr. Rahmoun, for taking from their precious time to read and assess my work. I want also to render my gratitude to all of the department members for their help and support. Finally I thank everyone, who directly or indirectly, assisted me in accomplishing this task. III Abstract British travel writers were driven by an urge to find an elsewhere still unexplored, a place where a traveller could still become a pioneer, a heroic adventurer. The Orientalists who actually visited Arabia were struck by what they saw, by the exotic natural geography and the strange aspects of its inhabitants. And almost always they were attracted to the former and repelled by the latter. By using imagology as an approach of study, this dissertation addresses the question of how Arabia was portrayed in Freya Stark’s The Southern Gates of Arabia, through the extraction of the literary images of the people and the place and the analysis of the different strategies used in depicting them. IV Contents Dedication .................................................................................................... II Acknowledgements .................................................................................... III Abstract ...................................................................................................... IV Contents ....................................................................................................... V General Introduction .................................................................................. 1 Chapter One: Travel Writing .................................................................... 3 1.1. Introduction ................................................................................................. 5 1.2. Imagology ................................................................................................... 5 1.3. Said’s Orientalism ....................................................................................... 7 1.4. Travel Writing ............................................................................................. 7 1.4.1. Travel Writing and Imperialism .............................................. 8 1.4.2. Writing about Arabia ............................................................. 10 1.4.3. Victorian Britain and Arabia ................................................. 13 1.5. Freya Stark ................................................................................................ 15 1.5.1. Stark’s Works and Voyages .................................................. 17 1.5.2. The Southern Gates of Arabia ............................................... 18 1.6. Conclusion ................................................................................................ 20 Chapter Two: The Image of Arabia ........................................................ 21 2.1. Introduction ............................................................................................... 23 2.2. Encountering the People ........................................................................... 23 2.2.1. The Men’s Image ................................................................... 24 2.2.2. The Women’s Image ............................................................. 26 2.2.3. The Slaves .............................................................................. 29 2.3. Depicting the Environment ....................................................................... 29 V 2.3.1 The Topography ..................................................................... 30 2.3.2 Fauna and Flora ...................................................................... 32 2.4. Other Aspects ............................................................................................ 33 2.5. Stark’s Descriptive Approaches ............................................................... 35 2.5.1. Detachment ............................................................................ 35 2.5.2. Patronization .......................................................................... 36 2.5.3. Engagement ........................................................................... 37 2.5.4. Integration .............................................................................. 38 2.5.5. Eroticization ........................................................................... 39 2.6. Conclusion ................................................................................................ 40 General Conclusion ................................................................................... 41 Bibliography ............................................................................................... 44 VI General Introduction The Orient had a considerable influence on English literature in general and on Victorian travel writing in particular. Scores of British diplomats, traders and scholars visited the Middle East eager to explore the mysterious Orient. They visited the region and resided there among its people. When they went back to Britain, they brought back their accounts of the Eastern way of Life. The travellers reported on customs nearly unknown to Europeans until then, they were amazed by what they discovered. British travellers wrote a huge amount of books on their journeys during the second half of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, including on Arabia. Many of these accounts were contradictory despite reporting on the same people and places. This variation of perspectives was influenced by the authors themselves, according to their personalities and gender. Therefore travelogues often give more information on the writers than on the places written about. Travellers find it far easier to describe the houses, boats, food, dresses, weapons of the natives than to understand their thoughts and feelings. Most writings were intended to purely inform, and stuck to descriptions, with measures and numbers rather than human particularities. Western female travellers provided a rich and detailed description of the Orient. Unlike male travellers, they were able to participate in the women’s daily life, social gatherings and religious celebrations. During her sojourn in Yemen, Freya Stark composed one of her most successful works; a book entitled The Southern Gates of Arabia. A classic of English travel literature, it is a chronicle of Stark’s journey in the Hadhramaut region between 1934 and 1935. Stark wrote about all the aspects of her journey in a detailed manner. She provides insightful and rich portraits of the landscape and the people she encounters. Freya Stark acted as a reporter trying to be as faithful and truthful as possible. 1 This dissertation examines her travel book, attempting to answer the following research questions: • How does Freya Stark’s The Southern Gates of Arabia describe the local population and the environment they live in? • To what extent Stark’s travelogue rests on her imagination, was she able to bring back objective reports of Arabia? To answer these research questions, this study resorts to imagology as a research methodology. The Southern Gates of Arabia is a voluminous book, it can be fruitfully searched for countless literary images. This dissertation takes a critical interest in registering and describing textual evidence of cultural imagery, ethnic stereotyping and national identity, adding further theoretical frameworks and resulting in a whole array of insights. This work is divided into two chapters, the first one is theoretical and the second is practical, together pairing in a complementary way to tackle the main interests of this paper. The first chapter will describe the context of the research, the methodology used, an overview of Victorian Britain and Arabia, the biography of Freya Stark, her voyages and writings, as well as previous travelogues on Arabia done by other travellers. It will also introduce the concepts of Orientalism, Imperialism and colonialism, demonstrating how they relate to travel writing. The second chapter will extract the images used to portray the people and the place, as well as other aspects such as religion, education and economy. Furthermore this chapter will analyse the different descriptive approaches used by Freya Stark in constructing such images. 2 CHAPTER ONE TRAVEL
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